Tell Me the Truth About Love

Dans les yeux d'Elsa Triolet(fr)

Portrait of the writer Elsa Triolet, wife of poet Louis Aragon. The tile is a play on a famous poem by Louis Les yeux d'Elsa.

Change Itself – An Art Apart: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge(en)

To sum up the life and work of British artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is close to impossible. Not only because of the wide range of artistic disciplines, but also because of the timespan, since the mid 1960s to the present day, that has been saturated by hundreds of records, thousands of concerts, exhibitions, interviews, videos, spoken word performances, collages, sculptures, philosophy, cultural engineering, occultism and radical transgender concepts. A couple of descriptions are still valid after these 50 years of active creativity and provocation. P-Orridge is a romantic existentialist and a cultural engineer. Everything is both work as such and seed for cultural and behavioural change.

Karel Jonckheere(nl)

Documentary about the life and work of Flemish poet Karel Jonckheere looked at from four perspectives/professions: farmer, fisherman, sheepherder and hunter.

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation(en)

The parallel lives of writer Truman Capote (1924-84) and playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-83): two friends, two geniuses who, while creating sublime works, were haunted by the ghosts of the past, the shadow of constant doubt, the demon of addictions and the blinding, deceptive glare of success.

General Idea: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle(en)

"GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a humorous, informative and ultimately poignant documentary about General Idea. Formed in 1969, they produced art that targeted and mimicked media, consumerism and celebrity, creating a revolutionary new spirit of art making. Interviews with AA Bronson, the sole survivor of the trio, lends personal relevancy to this story of art and sexual politics. GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a tale of love, fame, overwhelming loss and, ultimately, renewal." -AGO.net

Robert Mapplethorpe(en)

The Robert Mapplethorpe documentary, from 1988--one year before he died--is an excellent examination of one of the most controversial of American photographers. British documentarian Nigel Finch does an outstanding job fusing interviews with Mr. Mapplethorpe himself, with critic and author Edmund White, and with several of Mapplethorpe's subjects as well, with numerous shots of the man's work. Mapplethorpe, gay, did not hesitate to photograph what he wanted to without fear of reprisal or censorship. Indeed, a good number of his pieces were not shown in the documentary at its original airing on PBS with the comment, "Considered Unsuitable for Viewing On This Transmission." His openly sexual work can at times be more than shocking, but it is always powerful and direct; as critic Lynn Davies says in the documentary, he did not pose people but photographed them doing what they would normally do in the course of their lives.

Angel of the Night(da)

Michael Strunge and other young Danish poets, accompanied by images of night-time Copenhagen.

Gay Art Seeking a Home(es)

In 2005 the NGO Cultural Association Visible in Madrid begins to create a collection of gay-themed art (LGBT), with works donated by artists from around the world. The Visible Collection contains more than four thousand works of artists from thirty countries, what's making it in one of the world's largest of its kind, and now is looking for a space to be displayed. The documentary tells the story of how a project was realized that only seven years ago seemed impossible and now is looking for a "home", a museum to house the collection of a stable way and protect it from inclement weather and the vagaries of history and politics.

Zurita, You Will See Not to See(es)

An account of the experiences by poet and National Literature Award laureate Raúl Zurita, during his travels and his daily life, as he reflects on topics such as state terrorism and death

A Little Love(en)

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

Francisco Massiani(es)

This documentary is a chronicle of the journey through the most important sites of the life of venezuelan writer Francisco Massiani who reveals the details of his work and the love of his life.

The Poem, My Old Mother(ko)

Ekelöf's Blick - En Nordisk Diktarresa(sv)

Ekelöf's Blick is a film about swedish poet and mystic Gunnar Ekelöf. The film is an attempt to visually articulate how Ekelöf saw things, a world characterized by an enigmatic beauty never previously formulated in such a way.

Even Today He’d Speak His Mind(de)

Documentary about the German poet Erich Weinert.

Toute la vérité, rien que la vérité : Jean Cocteau(fr)

In 1959, Jean Cocteau looked back on his artistic journey for the Télé Monte-Carlo television show Tout la vérité, rien que la vérité. The program ends with a tasty anecdote about television that Cocteau describes as a “box of tricks”. A few weeks later, in the same Victorine studios, Cocteau directed most of the sequences for his last opus: The Testament of Orpheus (1959).

Poet of His People(en)

Pablo Neruda’s life unfolds and becomes the basis for the symbolic representation of his poem “Barcarola”, intermixing live action, still footage, computer images, dance and poetry.

Trudell(en)

A chronicle of legendary Native American poet/activist John Trudell's travels, spoken word performances and politics.

Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat(en)

Exploring the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and '80s shaped his vision.

Voices & Visions: T.S. Eliot(en)

T. S. Eliot has been considered by many to be the leading American poet of this century. His contemporaries in the 1920s recognized in “The Waste Land” an expression of the exhaustion and fragmentation that afflicted so many in that post-war era. They also recognized the originality of Eliot’s poetic technique and admired his insistence on the need for spiritual values in an age of popular kitsch.

Being in a Place: A Portrait of Margaret Tait(en)

Drawing on a wealth of unseen archival material and unpublished notebooks, the film weaves a complex and personal portrait of Margaret’s life, from the perspective of a fellow artist sensitive to the potential Margaret envisaged for film as a poetic medium.